Understanding travelers’ preferences for different types of trip destinations based on mobile Internet usage data

This paper proposes to segment the population using mobile internet usage data and accordingly to better understand travellers’ preferences for different types of trip destination revealed in mobile phone traces. The method is tested for the city of Shanghai, China, by using a special mobile phone dataset that includes not only the spatial-temporal traces but also the mobile internet usage data of the same users. We identify statistically significant relationships between a traveller’s favourite category of mobile internet content and more frequent types of trip destinations that he/she visits. For example, compared to others, people who preferred the content category “tourism”, had a significantly higher preference to visit touristy areas. Moreover, people who used mobile internet more intensively were more likely to visit more commercial areas, and people who used less mobile internet preferred to have activities in predominantly residential areas.